Another Country House in Attica

Author(s): JOHN ELLIS JONES

Source: Archaeology, Vol. 28, No. 1 (January 1975), pp. 6-15
Published by: Archaeological Institute of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41685608
Accessed: 01-06-2015 06:30 UTC

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A map of theeasternMediterranean
and theBlackSea, withinsetsof Attica(center)
and of theVari area (right).

Another House
Country

years ago an article entitled "A
Country House in Attica" appeared in
Several
thisjournal, describing a classical Greek
house found eight miles north of Athens. In
itsplan and constructiontechniques,the Dema
House, as this dwelling came to be called,
seemed to parallel houses established as the
standard type at the northern Greek city of
Olynthus, which was excavated more than
fortyyears ago. Although the Olynthusdwell-
ings are by no means uniform in plan, their
layoutsdid have certaincharacteristicfeatures:
in the southern half of the building there was
a small internalcourtyardand in the northern
half a roofed range consistingof a single row
of livingrooms set side by side at the rear with
a colonnade in front.The colonnade was open
or partly open to the court; the ends of the
colonnade were often screened off by extra
rooms along the sides of the court. Even
though a number of these houses had rooms
at the ground level only, the majorityseemed
to have had a second story above the main
transverse block, one whose layout matched
the lower floor and included a railed balcony
and a series of bedrooms.
The Olynthian houses not only conform to
classical Greek descriptions of well-designed
homes but even have parallels elsewhere in
ancient Greece. The ancient Hellenic soldier
and writerXenophon (ca. 428-354 b.c.) com-
pared a house whose mud-brickwalls and tim-

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in Attica By JOHN ELLIS JONES

of theVari Cave House fromthewest.

Reconstruction
7

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 Typicalhousesat Olynthus:(A) twohouseson the northside of a
blockwiththeirentrances(arrowed)leadingfromthestreetthroughor
pastthelivingrooms;(B) twohouseson thesouthside of a blockwith
directentryto thecourt.Plansshowplasteredor cobbledcourts,rooms
withplaster(dotted)or earth(plain)floorsand staircases;(C) reconstructed
elevationof theleft-handhouse fromwithinitscourt.

Macedonianand Thracianpastas-houses:(A) a house at Pella

witha paved court;(B) a house at Seuthopolis:restored
ground-plan,restoredupper floor,and (C) reconstructed
elevationwiththeouterwallof thecourtremoved.

The Dema House in Attica:(A) remainsin situ;(B) restoredgroundplan.

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ber elementswere protectedby foundationsof
imperishablestones and an impermeable tiled
roof to a well-disciplinedbody of troops, the
strongestmen of which were set in the front
and rear ranks. He furtherattributedto Soc-
rates a description of a good house as one
whose higher southward facing part was
fronted by a pastas, which admitted the low
wintersunlightintothelivingroomsbut shaded
themfromthe higher,fiercerheat of summer.
The excavatorsat Olynthusapplied Socrates'
termto the transversecolonnade of the typical
home, and this kind of dwelling came to be
known as a pastas-house. Such a house had
been excavated earlier at Pella, the capital of
Macedonia, and another was found later at the
ancientThracian capital of Seuthopolis, now in
Bulgaria. Seuthopolis was founded by King
Seuthes III in the later part of the fourth
century b.c., and one would like to believe
that this monarch's architectural sense had
been influenced by Xenophon. At the begin-
ning of the fourth century b.c., the Greek
commander and his forces aided an earlier
Seuthes in battle and accepted his hospitality
(Xenophon, AnabasisVIII, 1-6). One wonders
if Xenophon ever gave his host some hints
on domestic improvements,which later took
root. The evidence does show that Seuthes
III followed some Hellenic models, for his
capital city had a grid plan, like Olynthus
and many other Greek cities,and one of the
houses there was clearly of the pastas type.
It had a court with a colonnade along its
northern edge. The colonnade had a right-
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A viewfromthe
mountains overtheplain
and bayof Vari.The
nearerfigureis looking
downat theentrance
of the Cave of Pan, the
further figureis pointing
up at theridgesiteof
thehouse.
angled return to the south, two storerooms
behind the main pastas, a room behind the
shorterwing and in between, a three-roomed
complex and a narrow staircase leading to a
galleryand rooms above.
The Dema House, tentativelydated to the
years between 421 and 413 b.c., is the first
structurediscovered in Attica which parallels
the Olynthiandwellings.The similarities,how-
ever, are of a limited and imperfect nature:
although the general plan is correct- the court
and the layout of rooms conform- the pastas
itselfcan be surmised only from the position
of a singlesurvivingcolumn base. Now another
parallel has been found on Atticsoil; it is also
a countryhouse situated outside Athens,but it
dates about a century later than the Dema
House. Therefore it must postdate, by a gen-
eration or so, the latest house at Olynthus,
which was destroyed by King Philip of Mac-
edón in 348 b.c. As shall be seen later, this
Attichome has an element not found in Olyn-
thian houses, which were essentially urban
dwellings,and it mightthereforebe regarded
as a hybridtype.
This second house is situated twelve miles
south of Athens not quite two miles north of
Vari, a village at the head of a coastal plain
leading down to a broad open bay. The site,
being more secluded than that of the Dema
House, is well off the nearest main road, the
Vari-Koropi highway,from where it can just
be made out as a low ridge almost surrounded
by hills. The hills are the southern outliers
 The Vari Cave House afterexcavation:a viewfromthesouth,showingthe
paved courtwitha columnbase in situand roomson thenorthand east.

Groundplan of Vari Cave House: theclearedremains.

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of the Hymettusrange. The house crowns the
rockycrest of a landspur which terminatesat
thejunction of a deep watercourseand a shal-
low runnel, both of which are dry for most of
the year. The lower slopes of the ridge consist
of rough plowland, and the uncultivatedareas,
withwastes of small boulders, rockyoutcrops,
pines and scrubby vegetation, resemble the
higher slopes behind.
The existence of an ancient site was long
known from surface remains: remnants of
house walls on a terraced foundation define
a rectangularenclosure withinternaldivisions.
Close scrutinyof the area suggested that there
had also been adjoining structuresoutside one
corner and a large outer enclosure stretching
to the south down the ridge. For a long time,
this fold in the hills had been associated with
the Cave of Pan and the Nymphs, a cave
known to several of the early travelersof the
eighteenth-century and excavated by the
American School of Classical Studies at the
beginningof thiscentury.The proximityof the
house to both the cave and the village of Vari
has led to itsbeing called the Vari Cave House;
this name distinguishesit from other ancient
houses excavated in or near Vari itself.
It was clear from the surface remains that
the structurewas worthyof study as an ex-
ample of Attichouse planning. They indicated
a dwelling somewhat smaller than the Dema
House, but one, nonetheless, of considerable
size. Whereas the Dema House measured 72 by
52 feet,the Vari Cave House measured rough-
ly 58 by 45 feet. It was set square across the
ridge, facing south as if to enjoy the distant
view of the plain and sea between the sloping
hills and to present itself boldly to the sun;
consequently, its width was greater than its
depth. In other respects,the Vari Cave House
showed a more ambitious and painstaking
spirit than its counterpart north of Athens.
Unlike the Dema House, which was built on
naturallylevel ground, it rested on a site that
had been made level withconsiderable effort:
the frontand sides of the platformhad to be
built up, and some of the bedrock had to be
removed from the center and rear parts of
the building site.
Xn 1966, under the auspices of the Greek
Archaeological Service, the BritishSchool of
Archaeologyat Athens mounted excavationsat
the site of the Vari Cave House. These inves-
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tigations were directed by A. J. Graham of
Manchester University,L. H. Sackett of the
Groton School, Massachusetts,and the author,
all students of the British School at Athens.
The work clarifiedthe similaritiesand differ-
ences betweenthishouse and the Dema House.
While both dwellingswere built withthe same
basic methods,the Vari Cave House had more
complex foundation walls: the outer walls,
which were both thicker and higher, made
greateruse of uprightlimestoneslabs and split
boulders, materials obtainable on or close to
the site. Generally the foundation walls meas-
ured two or more feet in thickness and in
places as much as three feet in height.
The interiorfoundation walls were verydif-
ferent, however. In room vu, they had the
same substantial height and thicknessas the
outer walls, but theyused fittedrubble rather
than uprights. Between rooms hi and iv, the
wall was nearly two feet thick,but not as well
built and may have possiblybeen an addition.
Everywhere else- with the exception of two
lengths reaching 18 inches in width (the west
wall of room vi and the wall just north and
in line withit)- the inner walls were narrower
and thinner,measuringroughlya foot,both in
thickness and height. These variations con-
trastsharplywiththe uniformityfound in the
Dema House. They may indicate that the
builders of the Vari Cave structureadapted
theirstandards to actual needs: if some of the
interiorpartitionsdid not bear a great amount
of weight,the foundation walls beneath would
not need to be very stout. Most of the non-
bearing interiorpartitionswere built of neatly
fittedrubble. One small box-like addition or
extension to room iv used the upright slab
technique but on a lesser scale than thatfound
in the outer walls.
The rooms of the house were floored with
tamped earth. The courtyard,however,in the
centralpart of the house, was paved withlime-
stone slabs except for a small area of bedrock.
There are now gaps in thissurface,but once it
was probablyuniform.The flagstonecould be
easily split from outcrops behind the house.
Nothing was left of the mud-brick and tim-
ber superstructure other than the earth fill
of the rooms, but of the roofing there were
some traces- very scrappy tile fragments,
glazed reddish-brown or black on their top
surfaces, belonging to the common Laconian
type of shallow concave rain and narrow con-
vex cover tiles.
11
 The Vari Cave House: (A) theoriginalplan; (B) restoredelevationof thepastas;
(C) restoredelevationof thesouthfrontageand (D) plan incorporating alterations.
The internal plan of the Vari Cave House
was well-knitand regular. As in the Dema
House, the plan included a single row of
rooms at the rear or north side, a large open
area in the middle- easily identified here by
the paving- and two corner rooms in the front
of the house. The room in the southwest
corner was distinguished from the other
chambers by its high thick walls, the signifi-
cance of which will be discussed later on.
The greatestdifferencebetween the remains
of the two dwellings,however, was the much
richer evidence in the Vari Cave House for
the patternof colonnading. In contrastto the
single column base found in the Dema House,
the Vari Cave House had three column bases,
each with a round sinking in the middle to
receive a wooden shaft.The three bases were
found imbedded in the flagstone pavement,
and the positions of other displaced bases
could be identifiedfromround cuttingsmade
in the flagstones and/or bedrock. A broken
base of the same type was recovered half-
buried in one of the northern rooms, and a
column base of another sort,plain topped and
somewhat narrower, was found just outside
room v. All these remains made it clear that
once a long colonnade had frontedthe north-
ern rooms. This colonnade was certainlymore
open than most Olynthian examples, which
were oftenquite short,consistingof only three
or four open bays; in some cases the inter-
columniationswere even half-closed by waist-
high walls.The Vari Cave House was also more
rusticthanitsOlynthiancounterparts:the floor
ofthe colonnade was merelyan extensionof the
paved court in the middle, whereas in the
northerncitythe pastas was usually differenti-
ated from the pebbled court by being floored
12
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withearth,plasteror mosaic. These differences
notwithstanding, the Vari Cave House was still
essentiallyof the pastas type.
In addition, the Vari Cave House had a
short three-baycolonnade stretchingbetween
the two southern rooms, and the roof con-
nected the northernangles of these rooms to
the northern colonnade. This arrangement
must have created a false peristylewith cir-
culation blocked by the two corner rooms.
Two factorsfavor this sort of reconstruction.
First,the intercolumniationsof the north col-
onnade were not uniform; the end ones were
wider. Although one reason forthisdifference
mightbe thata longer lintelbeam was deemed
safe when supported at one end by a solid wall,
it must be significantthat the inner walls of
the corner rooms were in line with the end
columns. Thus a systemof north-southlintels
could be supported. Secondly,at some timethe
easternmost bay of the north colonnade was
cut off by an eighteen-inch- thick wall; it dis-
placed the column base and lined up withthe
eighteen-inch-thick wall of the southeast cor-
ner room. Very likely these two open-ended
compartmentswere joined by a roof.
Thus the reconstructed plan consists of a
row of rooms at the rear, in frontof them a
pastas, fully open to a central court, wings
joining onto rooms in the front corners and
a colonnade between the frontrooms to shelter
the entrance to the house. The question arises
whether the same arrangements were repro-
duced on an upper floor- with,for example,
a balcony over the pastas and bedrooms be-
hind. Upstairs rooms could- and indeed had
to be- deduced from the remnants of many
 Toweredhouses:(A) twohousesat Colophon,withdetachedtowershavingground-floor
and externalstonestaircases;(B) theupper floorof thetwotowers;(C) a farmhousenear
Chersonesuswitha massively builttower.
Olynthian houses because there were stone
bases for wooden stairs and solid platforms
used as landings for two-flightstaircases. Fur-
thermore,the thicknessof the walls in Olyn-
thus,whichaverages eighteen inches for outer
and inner walls, was adequate to carry the
weight of the higher superstructureand the
extra timberworkneeded for an upper story.
No stairwaybase was found in the Vari Cave
House, but this alone is not conclusive evi-
dence against a second floor: it is known that
the ancient Greeks often salvaged timbers,
tiles and structural furnishings from aban-
doned houses. The crucial factoris the varia-
tion in the thicknessesof the walls. The outer
walls are more than adequate to support the
weight of a second floor; but, in any house
with a central court, the floorjoists and roof
beams would have to be supported by some of
the inner walls, and here the inner walls are
pointedlyweak, particularlythose of the north-
ern rooms,over whichan upper floormightbe
expected. Most of the interiorwalls are a mere
foot thick; only two walls near the east side
are eighteen inches in thickness- an under-
standably greater width since these are un-
supported walls, each of which,probably,had
to bear a corner of the roofing systemat its
free end.
If the thin inner walls imply there was no
second story,whywere the outer walls so thick?
One explanation might be that they reflecta
need for security:theyare, afterall, the outer
casing of the house and are broken for only
one doorway and few windows. They might
also reflecta need for solidity:these walls were
not bedded on natural flat earth but were set
on an artificialterrace of dry rubble on thè
west,and they retain a certain depth of earth
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rooms
fill beneath the floor level on the south and
east sides. The northern wall retained the
higherground outside the house; in fact,it has
bulged in several places, and many wall slabs
were found tipped precariously inward. The
thickestof the northernpartitionwalls might
well have been added to compensate for a
structuralweakness resultingfromthisinward
thrust. A point of practicalityalso arises: if
the builders wanted both to use the massive
slabs available at the site and to set them in
either two parallel rows of uprights or in one
row backed by smaller fittedrubble, it would
have been easier to build with a generous
width, using a fill of rubble and earth, than
to adhere to a strictstandard.
-^^.lthough this explanation may suffice for
the outer walls, it does not adequately cover
the inner walls of the southwestcorner room,
constructedof roughly coursed rubble blocks
to the same height and thicknessas the outer
walls of the house. The contrastbetween this
room and all the others implied that it was
higher- certainly possessing two stories, and
possibly even three. Access to the upper por-
tions was no doubt gained by a ladder within
the structure itself. Thus, the house had a
generally low profile with a tower-likecon-
structionin one of its corners,a featurewhich
from the outside appeared all the higher be-
cause it stood above the highest point of the
terraced foundation.
Literaryand archaeological records attestto
the factthat Greek houses, both farmand city
dwellings,could have towers. Such structures
could be used as storage places for produce
or goods, as work rooms or as domestic quar-
13
ters. Inscriptions dealing with the temple
estates of Delos and Rheneia list various farm
buildings including two with towers, one of
which contained a storeroom. Archaeologists
have identifiedboth structuresas square con-
structions.A speech of Demosthenes vividly
describes the ransacking of a homestead not
far from Athens; he relates how the intruders
broke down the main door, burst into the
courtyardand destroyedall the house, except
the pyrgos - the tower. The assailants were
foiled when the maidservants locked them-
selves in the tower where they lived; this
account implies that the tower was an integral
part of the house. At Colophon in Asia Minor,
the American excavations of the 1920's re-
vealed rather loosely planned town houses
which included two-storied towers with ex-
ternal stone stairways.These structuresstood
either on their own on the side of the court
away fromthe main quartersof the house or in
a side court entirely by themselves. Recent
excavations have revealed towersbelonging to
ancient farmhouses near the Greek colony of
Metapontum in southern Italy. In the Crimea,
Russian archaeologists investigating colonial
Chersonesus have found farmhouses of the
third and second centuries b.c., which incor-
porate towers, recognizable from their very
thick walls. These towers usually project at
least partially beyond the main walls of the
house, but in the Vari Cave House the pyrgos
was totallyintegrated within the rectangular
plan of the structure.
All told, the house at Vari would have had
eight or nine rooms- seven on the ground
floor and an extra one or two in the upper
part of the tower. The use of the individual
rooms cannot be identifiedbecause each was
about the same size, was probably simplyfur-
nished and entirely lacked those features-
cement or mosaic floors and painted wall
plaster- which mightdifferentiatea reception
or dining room from a storeroom or kitchen.
There are some minor distinctions,however.
Room i had paving in one corner and small
compartmentsalong one wall; room iv had
a low stone base in the middle- conceivably
a hearth or brazier stand- as well as a low
bench of earth and stones along its east wall.
Another such bench, perhaps, had been form-
ed on the south side of the room by a later
displacement of the wall.
There are hints of changes made in the in-
14
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terior of the house. The foot-widepartitions
of the north range are original and point to
an early arrangement of four rooms, one of
which was of double size; to this can be added
an uninterruptedpastas and a separate square
room in the southeastcorner. The changes, by
no means necessarilycarried out all at once,
resulted in fiverooms on the north(one being
lengthened southwards), a shortened pastas
with at least one of its columns removed, a
second open-ended room at its east end or,
alternatively,a long north-southroom at the
east with its center section open to the court
and, again, an extra room or shed in the south-
east corner of the court itself.
Outside the house, along the greater part
of the south front,there was a low step or ve-
randah which was a much wider versionof the
terracefoundation on the west; thisporch may
have been lightly roofed and even partly
walled in, and at its southeast corner stood a
small shed. Adjoining the house on its south
and east sides, was a much larger enclosure
which must have had straight walls on the
south and west,a rathercurvingand irregular
wall on the east and another meandering cross
wall dividing the lower from the upper part.
Of all these structuresonly the stone founda-
tions for the mud-brickwalling remain.
The historyand dating of this homestead
can be reconstructed only in uncertain and
general terms.Coins and sherds suggestthatit
was built and occupied sometime in the last
quarter of the fourthcenturyor the firstquar-
ter of the third century b.c. Despite the evi-
dence that there were internalalterations,the
lack of wear on the threshold in room i indi-
cates that the house was not occupied for a
verylong time. It was probably abandoned in
an orderly fashion, since the small finds were
few in number. A handful of sherds dating
to the fifthcenturyb.c. suggests that the site
itselfwas used earlier, and some late Roman
lamp fragmentsand a Byzantine coin suggest
that it was subsequently reoccupied, perhaps
by squatters,shepherds or harvesters.
The finds cannot be discussed in any detail
here, but several deserve mention. These in-
clude fragmentsof large coarse pots, a foot
in diameter and from two to three feet in
height; they were "combed," that is, grooved
or scratched by the potter as if with a narrow
comb, on theirinnerfaces for about half their
 Some findsfromthehouse: (A) a coin of Eleusis;
(B) a kantharos;(C) a smallpitcher,and (D) a lamp.

circumference.There were also fragmentsof For Further Reading: J. W. Graham and

narrow terracottarings of much the same di-
ameter and likewise combed along the inside
face, as well as equally large disk-like lids,
characterizedby patternsof raised ridges and
small holes. These pottery fragments have
been interpretedas beehives on the basis of
ancient and modern parallels, and scientific
testsrevealed a faintdeposit of beeswax on the
pots. Thus thisisolated sitein the hills south of
Athens produced a honey famous in antiquity
and today- the Hymettus honey. This is but
one ofthemanysmall,tellingdetailswhichhave
shown how the Vari Cave House might have
looked in ancient times,a dwelling which has
demonstrated the architectural preferences
and methods of constructionof the Classical
Greeks.
D. M. Robinson, Excavationsat Olynthus,Part
VIII (Baltimore 1938); A. J. Graham, J. E.
Jones and L. H. Sackett,"The Dema House in
Attica,"Annual oftheBritishSchoolat Athens57
(1962) 75-1 14, "An AtticCountryHouse below
the Cave of Pan at Vari," Annual of theBritish
Schoolat Athens68 (1973) 355-452; J. E. Jones,
"A CountryHouse in Attica,"Archaeology 16
(1963) 276-283, The Greeks(New York 1971).
JOHN ELLIS JONES formerly a studentand now
a SeniorLecturer in theDepartment ofClassics,Uni-
versity College of North Wales, Bangor, has been
involvedsincethemid-1950' s in theexcavationand
publicationofvarioussitesin Greeceand theGreek
islands.

15

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